Google Previews Upcoming Android Release

SAN FRANCISCO – At its annual developer conference held today, Google announced a litany of updates to its mobile, auto, entertainment, and wearable platforms with a new version of Android. The upcoming Android L release will run on three smartwatches, 25 vehicles and a phone for emerging markets.

“We want to give an update on the momentum we’re seeing in mobile, and how Google is evolving platforms to meet that momentum,” keynoter Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Android, Chrome and Apps, said.

Android TV combines the search power of Google with high-quality graphics from Nvidia.

Android L will launch this fall with gains in unified design across platforms, a layered and animated user interface, context awareness, and voice recognition. The as-yet-named L is 64-bit compatible and will run on a new runtime system called ART to support ARM, x86 and MIPS for twice the performance improvement over its previous software, Dalvik.

“We want the experience to be seamless, it shouldn’t matter what device you were using before, we want you to be able to pick up where you left off,” Pichai said, adding that Google’s philosophy puts mobile devices at the center of the user universe.

Google says L is designed to be more efficient for developers, with few code modifications between platforms, easier job scheduling, and near-field communication (NFC) enablement. The new OS is “material themed” -- Google calls it Material Design -- with card shapes that cast shadows in the foreground and that can be manipulated by users through touchscreen. The design also has a cleaner more readable style with dark text and icons that look like silhouettes. L also allows for notifications in the lock screen, as well as levels of privacy that allow users to determine what notifications they want to show. The lock can also be set to recognize and open when a smartwatch is present.

Android L will be more memory efficient, Google claimed, with a new garbage collector and memory allocator to reduce the number of pauses and direction of pauses associated with garbage collection. Keynoter Matias Duarte, vice president of design, said Android L can also apply a “slower, more intensive memory collector to save anything 100s of kilobytes to many megabytes.”

Google also aims to improve battery efficiency with Project Volta, a method of optimizing the subsystem that includes a battery historian that visualizes use over time. A battery saver mode can also be triggered by the user or configured by developers to extend battery life up to 90 minutes.

Google also announced that Nvidia’s Tegra K1 mobile processor will support the Android extension pack for gaming and Android TV, which can be controlled by a smartphone or Android Wear device. Google officials said all of Sony’s HD 4K televisions and 15 sets from Philips will run Android TV by 2015.

The Moto 360 smartwatch features a round face and will be available this summer.

Tegra will also power Google’s Android Auto, a voice recognition-based system for answering messages, playing music, and navigation. Over 40 new partners have going the Android Auto Alliance, Android Engineering Director Patrick Brady said, and the first Android Auto-enabled vehicles will be sold this year.

I think it is a logical demand, but let the Google first focus on compatibilities with their own versions. If they can handle it they can go ahead working on compatibilities with other OSs as well.

I know that these two issues are not connected much with each other, but it requires enormous amount of efforts, to make the devices compatible with other OSs it needs to standardize the hardware, and that I think Google will not be ready to do. Browser is a completely separate case in OSs, and because of its uniqueness they could do it.

I am surprised to know that these are manufacturers. As far as I know that none of these are having their own manufacturing units, they are simply importing their phones from different Chinese original manufacturers. If you see their website you will not find consistencies in their models, every other day they are coming with a new model, very fast as compared to Nexus, iPhones, Moto etc!

I totally agree. That's one of the nice things about my Google Docs example. It doesn't matter what OS, device, or browser is used. It just works. I also don't have to do anything special to set it up that way.

""We want the experience to be seamless, it shouldn't matter what device you were using before, we want you to be able to pick up where you left off," Pichai said, adding that Google's philosophy puts mobile devices at the center of the user universe."

Google does a nice job with the capability in Google Apps. I can have a Google doc open, at the same time, on my phone, my tablet, my desctop PC, my laptop and my Chromebook. Whatever I type on one immediately shows up on all of the others.

That feature virtually eliminates the concept of needing to sync. It also works when other people are working on the same shared document. I can see the possibility of edit wars between telecommuting co-workers, but I haven't heard of that happening yet.

The article says, "Google partner with three Indian OEMs to create a Smartphone with dual SIM cards, an SD card, 4.5 inch screen, and FM radio for under $100.", but on the contrary there are not even a single OEM in India manufacturing their own mobile handset, then from where Google has found three different OEMs in India?

@joondan : The discussion is not to have a same resolution display in all the devices. The discussion thread is extending on compatibility. This original post was to bring in notice that upgrades without considering previous compatibilities will be increasing e-wastes. No doubt that Google is doing fairly good, and it is the pioneering force in letting virtually every hand a smart OS/Phone.